Did you know? (with LOTS of FREEBIES)

Did you know that January is National Braille Literacy month?

I didn't either... until I started doing some research on Helen Keller. We are studying her in our reading series and shockingly the kids are super into it. We have done a lot of non-fiction this year, but we haven't focused on specific people for past research so I am excited to start reading biographies and autobiographies.

So, as we are learning more and more about Helen Keller it seems obvious to expose my second graders to Braille and give them a little taste of reading with Braille. I found a wonderful kid-friendly site about Braille called Braille Bug. This site includes info about Braille (Louis Braille, history and games) and also links to the Helen Keller Kids Museum Online (which has some awesome pics and descriptions of her life).

I am definitely about to print out some Braille names for all my kiddos. Here's mine:

Click the picture above to do your name!

You've more than likely seen a few other posts I've made on Pebble Go. Well, Pebble Go just happens to have a great biography section (that I will be all over during Black History Month!!) and there is a section on Helen Keller. So, I've made a guided Web Quest for my kids to do during some tech time. If you don't have time for tech (or access to it) I also made a Text Reference page on Helen Keller. My kids are tackling Text Referencing as much as possible.

You can click the pictures above to get your free copies of these activities. (If you are in Journeys, like me, I am hoping these will be helpful to you!)

During our research on Helen Keller we are building a timeline of her life and learning what makes an event in some one's life significant. Because of the significant interest in this topic we are extending our unit on biographies and autobiographies and we are going to write our own autobiographies. We are starting with a bio-poem. If you haven't heard of a bio-poem before, it is a great way to get the kids thinking about their life.

Above are the guidelines for a bio-poem. Click the picture and you can download this for your kiddos. So, we are going to start with this poem and then in our writing journals we are going to write about different things in our life. I made up some labels to help the kids organize their pre-writing in their journals. 

Each child will receive all these labels and we will work on filling out their writing journals in an organized way! You can download these by clicking the picture above (compatible with Avery 5160 label). 

I hope to post more this week about how much progress we make in this and other topics!

 Have a great week!

blender blends freebie

Look at this cute blender:

Last month, we studied blends (with a focus on ending blends) and in a couple weeks we are going to focus on beginning blends so we will use this blender again soon!! Anyway, we made a big ol' smoothie with our blender. My kids made the fruit they wanted in it and then added a blend to the shape and we taped it on the blender. 

Now, when we focus on beginning blends I want to still use our blender. So, I made this little activity:

That is the completed project. Each student will get a blender like this:

 And fruit like this:

They will choose 2 different fruits. Write the blends on one fruit and make the rest of the blend word on the other fruit- like in the completed example above. 

This activity is actually part of my newest Treasures packet:

but I just had to share because I cannot wait to do this activity!!! Click below to get your own free copy!! :)

Have a great weekend... only 1 whole day left in my shoe giveaway!! Click here to enter...

This is how we do it: Seatwork

Oh dreaded seatwork! I have struggled for a while whether to have a seatwork time or just a center time. If I just have a center time then I don't have a reading grade for the week (you know since we don't use E's and S's anymore in 1st grade- we actually have to put in a number grade.) So, I decided on the seatwork option but I found a way to make it a little more interesting than just a work book page. I absolutely hate workbooks! My kids have the books that come with the reading series but we haven't written in them at all this year! (It can be some good summer review! ha!) Last year I used the workbook pages as homework pages and I tore all the pages out and sent them home and sometimes I got them back but sometimes I didn't. <--- That was at a school where my class size was 13. Now I have a class size of 23 and I don't have time to pull out pages out of workbooks and stuff folders with homework every afternoon so I send home a tic-tac-toe board weekly with homework activities. I digress... The truth of the matter is I needed to find a way to do seatwork, so I wasn't being bogged down with how to keep them busy during guided reading... I mean centers can only keep you busy so long... You guys know that center time can be really productive or really chaotic! I did a really good job training my kids at the beginning of the year for center time and I tried a no seatwork approach but it just didn't work for me. So, I came up with a type of "choice board" that my kids work with 4 days a week that practices phonics, spelling, comprehension, and word work skills. A traditional choice board is a great way to differentiate with any project. You can give choices based on interest, learning style, or ability. I truly believe that giving any kind of choice provides interest and to some extent differentiation no matter how you do it. So, last year I came up with a "choice board" that we use everyweek during seatwork time. This board provides a variety of practice in skills that we are working on. Then at the end of the week I grade (which takes a while) and get my reading grade for the week. I can make the boards longer or shorter depending on the week (if we have specific activities we need to accomplish or if we have a day off). The *best* thing about this seatwork is the kids can still work on it when you are absent! When a sub is there the kids are still working on things they are familiar with and not working on busy work. So, here is the cover of my choice board packet:

The board is made up of:

Word Configurations that I usually download from this fabulous site: Little Book Lane. She has lots of word configurations available. They are not too hard to make though!

Word Sort. I have a book of sorts or I will make a word sort to put in sorting word families or whatever skill we are working on for the week.

Spelling Practice. Sometimes I put rainbow writing, cut/paste words in ABC order, practice writing words, etc.

Grammar Practice- depends on the skill for the week

Reading Comprehension- depends on the skill and story for the week

Break the Code- so graciously provided in this yahoo group.

There are usually 6-8 pages attached to the cover page above.
Monday-Thursday students complete 2 pages before they can go to center time. We do 2 center rotations so they always get to go to at least 1 center a day. They keep this packet in their desk all week and turn in on Thursday (that's when the grading begins!)
I really like how this is something consistent and I am never scrambling for something to do (I know we have all been there!)

So, there you have it! Spiced up seatwork! How do you keep your kiddos working and learning during center time??

Hope ya'll are having a fun, safe weekend!

Write Around the Room Freebie!

Hello again bloggy friends! Those of you out there teaching Scott Foresman Reading you may be in a similar spot as we are right now...the Bossy R! I put together a "Read, Write, and Sort" around the room activity for Bossy R. My kids love read and write around the room...it is something about carrying around a clip-board that gives a kid a sense of importance! LOL

If you would like this center just CLICK HERE!

In other news... I had my eval today. We had some crazy weather last night (a tornado warning with sirens going off until 2 a.m.). Probably 3/4 of my kids were sitting in a basement or a hallway in the middle of the night last night so you can only imagine their enthusiasm today! I don't think I can count on one hand how many times I said (during my eval) "Please sit up." They all wanted to lay their heads down and look at me like they had never counted a group of ten before! I am not too worried about the actual eval, but now I have to literally re-teach everything we did today because they were soo out of it!! I guess it is not too bad though--I don't have to think too hard tomorrow!
Have a good one,

Have I been living under a rock...

Maybe I have... well I feel like I have! I am trying to get "back in the swing of things" since the break and just found this progress monitoring site online that I am so excited to use! Check this out: easyCBM.com. There are reading fluency passages and word lists. There are letter name and sound pages. There are phoneme segmentation assessments. In addition, there is math progress monitoring too. Everything is provided for you on the site and it is amazing!!
The site also allows you to enter the scores online and track progress. My county doesn't have a lot of resources like this, so I am super excited to check into this more.
I have actually done some stuff this week, but left school without taking pictures...boo! So another day and post will bring that info.
Have a great weekend :)

Reading Street

One of the hardest things about switching schools has been the change in curriculums. Math isn't so much a big change (I mean you generally go by pacing guides and teach the same kind of stuff anyway). Reading on the other hand is frustrating because I have created so many resources to go along with the previous series (Treasures) and now I have to re-make things for my new series (Reading Street). This blog and yahoo group has saved me! If you are using Reading Street another fab blog is here.
Anyway, I have had to come up with some cutesy activities for our stories. They haven't been exactly my style, but my creavity is feeling cramped. I do want to share though...someone may be able to use or expand on what I have already created.

The first week is short a and based on a story called "Sam, Come Back!". The story is about a cat that runs away then comes back--real interesting...Anyway, after reading and studying short a all week we made a cat in a sack with a clozed sentence. Since it was only the 2nd week of school I was not trying to create a writing assignment that was too hard.

This week (the 2nd week) is short i and based on a story called "Pig in a Wig!". The kids loved the story and we did a similar project today. I got the craft idea here. It was a pretty cute idea. I printed the outlines on pink paper then we went through each step together. Then, I discovered some AWESOME writing paper here. Click "Try Now"! I was able to create a printable clozed sentence.
Here are the pics:

Have a great three day weekend!! Don't plan too much!

Slide your Words

My fellow first grade teachers and I have a center called "Slide Your Words". In this center, the kids actually slide words out of envelopes and have to segment while they slide to figure out what the word is. This is what it looks like:

We work on a different sound weekly (vowels, diagraphs, blends) and the words used in the "Slide your Words" center correlate with what we are working on that week. There is also a recording sheet that goes along with this center that is available here.

This center can be good practice at home too!

Here is another link for some of the actual strips that are used with the words and graphics. All you have to do is print on cardstock, laminate, and cut into strips.

Hope this is helpful to you, like it is for us :)
Enjoy!!

Done Planning!!!

I feel like I am a non-stop planner. Everytime I get online I somehow find something I "need" to do. It is a horrible addiction and I don't think anyone really understands unless you are a teacher. I decided to start blogging because all the amazing ideas I see online. All these teachers blog with all this stuff and I am impressed.

This is only my second year teaching so I am creating resources left and right and always looking for the best way (and the easiest way). I have gotten so many great ideas from blogs that other teachers have shared. I certainly hope I can pass along something worthwhile as well.

Before spring break we went on a field trip to see Goodnight Moon at the Nashville Children's Theatre. It was awesome...actually my second time seeing it! This field trip inspired first grade to pull together a unit on Goodnight Moon. One thing we did that was absolutely adorable was a glyph. Here are the directions and the graph we used:

And now for the best part... The final result!!

Of course my camera died after these two pictures and I forgot to take more before we went on break! Either way a super cute project and we had a lot of fun making it and writing!

UPDATE!!

So I took more pictures of our wonderful glyph.. Here they are :)